Junior creative strategist

Michael Lawson

Hello, I'm Michael. I make ads, a lot of them in fact. I learnt the basics by starting two small brands of my own, and along the way I realised that making the ads was the bit I enjoyed most. So now I'm looking for a junior creative strategist role, or freelance work.

Collider 2026, 4 ads

Collider is a brand I made some spec ads for. All four ran on their account at the end of September 2026, but they didn't do well. The best one got 2 sales at £62 CPA. I'm currently in the process of making another batch for them.

Rendered 2026, 3 ads

Myst 2024, 4 ads

NOAT 2026, 3 ads

NOAT is a brand I did spec work for. These ads haven't run on their account yet.

Myst Dream Lavender Aromatherapy disposable, nicotine-free

Side A

Myst

Myst was a nicotine-free vape brand I started in 2023. The vapes were infused with ingredients like L-theanine and chamomile, and they were made for people trying to quit smoking. The main insight was that a lot of people trying to quit missed the hand-to-mouth habit almost as much as the nicotine. It did well enough on Meta that I was thinking about a large stock order, but the 2025 disposable vape ban was looming by then, so I decided to move on.

  • Ran2023 to 2025
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Myst is how I got into this whole marketing thing. I probably got off on the wrong foot, though. I started out watching a lot of dropshipping guru content, and the gurus left me with some ethically questionable beliefs.

The idea for Myst came when I found a competitor brand called Ripple on TikTok. I liked the concept straight away and set about sourcing the product, and after a few weeks of talking with a supplier, some samples landed on my doorstep. The only problem was that they came as plain grey rectangles. So I did my best to make them look acceptable by marking each variant with coloured lines, and leaned mainly on the packaging for the branding.

As with sourcing, I had very little budget for ad production, so most of my marketing was static ads. When I did make a video, I filmed it with a mate, using a few props from around the house and the best B-roll I could find online. Looking back, it's a miracle those ads did as well as they did on Meta, because I had no idea what I was doing. At this point I didn't even know creative strategy existed.

Unfortunately just as I was considering placing a sizeable stock order, with proper branding this time, it started to look likely that the government would ban disposable vapes, whether they had nicotine in them or not. I didn't want to stay in vapes long term anyway, so I decided it was best to move on. I still look back on it fondly, especially as it started with a few hundred quid.

An early Myst sample order fresh out of the box: bagged test units labelled Sleep, Energy, Relax and B12
Myst orders packed and ready to ship via Royal Mail
Michael holding a jar of Rendered 100% grass-fed Men's Tallow, orange and bergamot

Side B

Rendered

Rendered was a dropshipping brand I started in 2025. Selling tallow skincare specifically branded for men, which almost nobody was doing, even though tallow was trending massively with women on social media at the time. The main issue however was the margins. I was getting a fairly steady £18 nCAC, but my break-even was just £15, and I didn't have the cash to front the gap while relying on subscriptions. So I decided to focus on my career as a creative strategist instead.

  • Ran2025 to 2026
Read the full story

Myst went well enough that my ego grew a lot faster than my skill. So by the time I started Rendered, I'd convinced myself that very good ads could brute force past any money problem, and that turned out to be a serious delusion.

The idea came from noticing that beef tallow was all over my feed, but nearly every brand was selling it to women. Hardly anyone was talking to men, even though it's a really good fit for men with dry skin.

The trouble was that the numbers had been tight from the start. To break even I needed each new customer to cost £15 or less, because my margins were under 3x. Most ads landed at around £18, but with the price already at £35 I couldn't see that gap closing.

Just before I shut it down, I came across the people leading creative strategy, like Olly Hudson, Sarah Levinger and Alex Cooper. Finding them is what got me learning it properly, and in the end it's why I decided to try to break into the industry. That's what I'm doing now, building my own way of working as I get more experience.

Rendered still taught me a lot, mostly because I was testing all the time. I probably made well over 100 static ads for it, so if I have a speciality, that's it.

Atom is my app that i've built with Claude over the last year to help me systemise my work, it does everything from task management and my daily schedule to organising and indexing my swipe file and creative format banks.

Atom: the swipe file, a gallery of proven static ads Atom: the warehouse, 255 documents sorted by category Atom: 37 video formats, sorted by awareness stage

Outside of this work I compete in the sport of strongman in the under 80kg class, or in other words eating all day and obliterating my body to the point where i feel twice my age. I don't post terribly often but you can see some of that on my instagram.

Training and comps on Instagram

  • Carlisle city centre at night
  • Open toFreelance work and a junior role
  • My copy of Alchemy by Rory Sutherland
  • The back of my competition shirt
  • A yellow vinyl record
  • Favourite adJohn West, Bear (2000)

What's it about?